Book Club Discussion Questions and Guide for Fifth Business (Deptford Trilogy) by Robertson Davies

1. When Percy Boyd Staunton denies his share of responsibility for the snowball that hit Mrs. Dempster and caused her premature labor, Dunstable Ramsay feels the full weight of guilt on his shoulders. Even years later, when he seeks out Mrs. Dempster again, he is highly sensitive to the magistrate's charge: "Guilt ... somebody bears it to this day!" Why does he feel this guilt so keenly? To what extent is he responsible for Paul's fate? For Staunton's?
2. Many of the characters in Fifth Business change their names. Dunstable Ramsay becomes Dunstan, Percy Boyd Staunton becomes Boy Staunton, Paul Dempster becomes Faustus Legrand and later Magnus Eisengrim. What happens when each of them is "born again"? Which aspects of their characters endure, and which are transformed?
3. Young Dunstable's flight from his mother colors the rest of his life. When he contemplates his relationship with Diana, his first lover, he shuns the motherly quality of her affection: "I had no intention of being anyone's dear laddie, ever again." How and why do the other men in the novel (Boy Staunton, Paul Dempster) flee their mothers? What are they seeking in a woman? How are the ideal and the reality of motherhood and womanhood conveyed in Ramsay's reflections on the virgin Mary?
4. "People marry most happily with their own kind," Davies once wrote. "The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age where they do not really know what their own kind is." What would have happened if Dunstan had married Leola? What kind of marriage would have better suited Boy?
5. "If you think her a saint, she is a saint to you," says Padre Blazon of Ramsay's fascination with Mary Dempster. What place does she come to occupy in his psychological landscape? Why is he so possessive of her, refusing to ask for Boy's assistance for her care?
6. King Edward VIII of England was forced to abdicate in 1936 after less than a year in office because he wanted to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American who was felt to be an unacceptable Queen. Why was this such a bitter blow to Boy? What did Edward represent to him? 7. If Ramsay is truly "Fifth Business," as Liesl describes, who are the hero and heroine, sorceress, and villain of the story? Do they correspond to the "usual cabal" described at the book's conclusion? Who are "the Basso and the Brazen Head" Liesl refers to in her letter? Who was the woman Boy knew and the woman he didn't know?
7. Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan prince who was seized and carried to Olympus by Zeus's eagle to become the cup-bearer of the gods. Ramsay suggests that Boy's corporate proteges were expected to fill that role. What did he want from them, and why did they always disappoint him?
8. "I seem to have emerged as a moralist; my novels are a moralist's novels," Davies said of his work. Certainly they are not moralistic in a conventional religious sense. In what sense are they moralistic? Ramsay tells Boy, "You created a God in your own image, and when you found out he was no good you abolished him. It's a quite common form of psychological suicide." What kind of God has Ramsay set up for himself? What light is shed on his moral character by his discussions of the devil? His talk with Surgeoner about fictional testimonials?
9. Fifth Business has sometimes been read as an allegory of Canada's struggle for recognition and identity. Who do you think plays the part of the U. S. in this interpretation? What devils might Canada have to address to develop fully as a nation?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Penguin Classics. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.